Skye let that sink in. Truly sink in to a depth that she hoped might begin to bring acceptance. They’d spoken some more and Skye had promised to call in a few days when she knew what her plans would be. It hadn’t been an easy conversation and there would be harder times ahead, especially with her father, but, whatever happened with the jewels—if she and her sisters did somehow manage to find them, and sell the estate to help pay for her mother’s medical bills—Skye knew that the healing that had come from their conversation would sustain her throughout her life.
Just before hanging up, her mother had asked why she hadn’t told Benoit the truth about what she would use the money for if they found the jewels. There was no censure in her mother’s voice, but Skye had felt it all the same. She’d told herself one hundred excuses since that moment, all of which had been both simultaneously true and false. That at first she hadn’t trusted him and then later he hadn’t trusted her was true...but not reason enough.
And while she had intended to tell him the night of the ball...in some ways it had been a relief not to. Because, deep down, she knew that revealing this would make her the most vulnerable she’d ever been. How he responded to that could break her into a million pieces.
‘And it could also give you the support you would need.’
‘Mum, please don’t talk like that.’
‘I don’t mean about me. Well, not just about me. You were doing yourself a disservice by not letting him be there for you, by not letting him be the man you believe he is.’
‘But what if he’s not, Mum?’
‘I don’t see how that’s possible,’ Mariam said confidently. ‘You wouldn’t have fallen in love with him if he wasn’t.’
And that was it. As if it were that simple. The thought of the raw vulnerability of telling him about Mariam made Skye’s heart quiver in her chest. But the hope that her mother had given her, the fact that she did know Benoit, did believe him to be good at heart soothed some of her fears and for the first time since leaving the chateau she considered the possibility of seeing him again.
Whether they found the jewels or not, whether they were able to do so in time for her mum’s treatment, whether she would actually go to university or not, Skye knew that there were some big changes she wanted to make in her life. And they wouldn’t cost a thing.
She would not be torn any more by what people expected or wanted from her. She would work hard to listen to herself, to find what it was she wanted to do or be. And, although everything screamed within her that the answer to that was inextricably linked to Benoit Chalendar, she knew that was something she had no control over.
Skye pulled the shawl around her shoulders as the first bite of the evening’s chill edged into the air. She turned to head back into the cottage but pulled up short when she saw the figure standing in front of the back door, believing that she was simply imagining it.
For a second, her eyes drank in the sight of Benoit, as if starved by the lack of it in her life. She thought then that it was one of the most marvellous sights she’d ever seen. Until she looked closer and saw the dark hollows beneath his eyes, the shade of stubble across his jaw.
He took a step towards her and Skye stepped back to keep the distance between them. Because she wasn’t sure that she would be able to resist the desperate longing to reach out to him, to touch him, pull him to her.
‘What do you want?’ she asked instead.
‘I would like, very much, for you to hear me out, if you will?’
She nodded, because it was all she could do, her entire body and brain short-circuited by his presence. He gestured towards the old wooden bench beside the rosebush at the edge of the garden and, on stiff legs, she made her way to it. Finally, he sat beside her, leaning his elbows against his knees and looking out across the same field that she had previously been studying.
‘Xander and I went to the shareholders’ meeting two days ago,’ Benoit started to explain, knowing that it was perhaps the wrong place, but the only place he could begin. ‘We told them that they could enforce the by-law if they wanted, but that they didn’t have to. It was their choice and both Xander and I were willing to abide by that choice. I told them that I should be CEO of Chalendar Enterprises not because I was married, but because I am damn good at it and I want it.’ He tried to ignore the way she stiffened beside him and pressed on, hoping that she’d see the truth of his words. ‘I do, but not badly enough to bind a kind, loving, amazing woman to me for the sake of it. So I need you to know that I would walk away if needed. Either way, Xander is stepping down from the company and...’ he let out a small surprised laugh of his own ‘...we’re going into business together,’ he finished, smiling ruefully. If anything good had come out of the awfulness of the last few days it was that he had started to forge the kind of relationship he’d always wanted with his brother, not based on perceived guilt or debt but an honest one. It was interesting and a little like walking through a minefield, but they were getting there.
‘I need you to know that before I tell you what I came here to say,’ he said, still staring out at the fields as dusk began to draw over them. He clung to that view, a view he’d never seen before but would remember for the rest of his life. ‘That you were right. I have spent years throwing distraction after distraction at the hurt my mother caused by leaving. It was so much easier to do that, to blame myself or others, than to recognise that hurt. Which was why I thought it was easier to push others away before they could inflict more of that hurt. But, as someone disturbingly wise pointed out, that pain was nothing compared to what I felt when I hurt you.’
He couldn’t look at her. Not yet. He needed to finish what he’d com
e here to say, otherwise he’d lose it.
‘I will never be able to apologise for...’ He could barely force the words out through the terrible memory of the words he’d used against her that day. ‘What I said was unforgivable. I belittled the time we spent together and I undermined you and everything that is powerful, glorious and incredible about you. Skye, please know that I will bear the scars of that hurt, that pain I caused you, on my heart for the rest of my life,’ he promised, for the first time in his life not caring that his vision had become blurred from the threat of tears.
‘You were also right when you said I was a coward. Even when I was hurting you, saying cruel things to push you away. I thought I was doing it to protect you from me, but I was wrong. It was because I was scared of the strength of my own feelings for you. You fought against me and for me. I was...scared because I’ve never been as happy as I was in Costa Rica with you, because I love you.’
Finally, he turned to look at her and his heart nearly broke in two when he saw the tears gathered in her eyes. ‘I love you,’ he said again. He might even have said it another time before she put her fingers to his lips and his heart dropped. He reached for her hands as if to hold her to him, but she pulled back and looked out at the same view he had just been desperately clinging to.
‘Thank you,’ she said, tucking her hand back under her thigh. ‘I...thank you for apologising for what you said that night.’
He felt nauseous all of a sudden, only now realising that he might have truly lost all hope.
Skye hadn’t missed the way that he had blanched before she had turned her attention to the horizon. But she’d had to turn away or she would never be able to say what she needed to. Shaking her head, blind to the beauty of the setting sun, she just marvelled.
‘How can it only have been eight days?’ she whispered, feeling the weight of his eyes on her face, neck, hair. ‘In Costa Rica you made me see things about myself that I’d not even thought were possible. You helped me... No, you made me confront things about myself that I’d never told anyone. You were also right. I think, because of the way I grew up, I would make myself into what I thought people wanted from me so that they would...’ she breathed around the sob welling in her chest ‘...so that they would keep me.’ A tear dropped from where it had grown thick and round at the corner of her eye. She hastily swept it away.
‘But you?’ she said, a laugh in her voice this time. ‘You didn’t want me in the first place.’
‘Skye—’